America's Foremost Business Fraternity

Is Your Chapter Its Own Worst Enemy?

October 22, 2010

By Nick Steinkrauss, 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner

I’ve heard it said by Brothers that they don’t understand why they have trouble recruiting outstanding members, or why more students don’t go to their events and speakers, or why the school doesn’t support their efforts. These issues all come from one common theme: chapter image.

Most Brothers don’t put a lot of thought or time into creating a chapter image. A chapter image cannot be simply what the chapter prints about itself in recruiting brochures. Rather, it is a compilation of who is a Brother in the chapter, what activities the chapter does and the manner in which the Brothers conduct themselves. These together create the chapter image and each needs to be studied to ensure the best possible image to the world outside of the chapter.

1.) Who identifies themselves with your chapter?

Hopefully, all your initiated Brothers are proud to identify themselves with the Fraternity. If not, the chapter needs to find out why and address the underlying issue as to why someone isn’t proud to be a Deltasig. But when you look at those who do identify themselves to the world as Deltasigs, who do you see? Leaders on campus or followers? Leaders in the classroom or ones who miss classes on a regular basis? People working toward their future careers or ones who will graduate (maybe) but without a clue as to what they want to do with their lives? Is your average GPA in the chapter above a 3.0? 3.3? 3.5? or below 2.5? All these things speak to the outside world of what type of organization you have on your campus. If you want your chapter to be taken seriously by the faculty, administration and fellow students, you need to pay attention to who is calling themselves Deltasigs. Your chapter is identified with those who are proud to be members.

2.) What activities does your chapter do?

By this, I refer to all activities. Are you best known for your career fair, your community service, or do you throw the best parties? While all have their place, if you want support from your school, you need to have solid professional and community service events and not have the school record for being written up for your parties. Your activities are a big factor in your recruiting and the support you will get from your faculty and administration, so if you want to recruit the best and brightest on campus, you need to have quality activities and not ones the local bar can put on better.

3.) How do your Brothers act in public?

Do people say to themselves “There go some crazy college kids” or “He’s someone I want to work at my company.” Everyone in college needs to have fun and let off pressure, but unfortunately, when in public, people who see you in class will also see you lying on the walkway drunk out of your mind. Everyone needs to consider how they appear in public at all times, not just when they want people to notice.

I don’t mean to put down any of the good times anyone has had through Delta Sigma Pi, but companies spend a lot of time and effort building their corporate image, and a similar effort on the chapter level will produce tremendous results for the chapter. By examining these areas in your chapter, you can build the type of image with which each Brother can be proud to be associated.